Thing 18 Building Your Personal Learning Network

I first explored Ning. Oh my. Is there some way to search for what you want to see? I saw a lot of alumni sites but none from any of my alma maters...like Rockfored, GRCC, MSU or GVSU. I also did not see any for the district where I teach. I had no idea how to find what I wanted to see. I did see some weird sites and wondered what was up with them. I'm not listing them because they are too weird to even post...think sick. I did a little exploration of Ludington Talks and found out they are in the middle of a big controversy over Wind energy. That was pretty interesting and I could see where it would be a great site if you were living in Ludington. My husband and I love to vacation in that area so I'll be checking back from time to time.

I then went on to explore MACUL. That was much easier to sift through and I actually spent quite a long time on their site. I loved the videos. I got lot of ideas on what I could do with my kids. In fact we're currently in the middle of a writing project that will lend itself nicely to a slide show, now that I've found some examples and can see what other teachers are doing.

The MaCul site also had a forum with many categories such as: MACUL news, Cool Tools , Technology and the Curriculium and more. On Cool Tools you would find postings about a cool website, tech-tool, or resource. People posted links for others to use or explore.

The problems I see with the PLN are getting the staff to use them. In my district we all have the opportunity to create a classroom web page and list it on our school web page. We use Schoolcenter which is totally user friendly. Not many elementary teachers in the district have a web page. I wonder why? In our school it is the specials teachers, art, music, computer lab and PE who have web pages....also one 3rd grade teacher and now me. Oh boy. How would you get the staff to use a PLN? Who would start it and update it?